My new heroes are Moby and PewDiePie
10 sundry Sunday notes
Happy Independent Bookstore Day! Here are some things I found worth sharing with all of you today:
Want to know how well read you are? This test by Penguin lets you learn how many of the 100 Classics (selected by Penguin readers) you’ve read. I’ve scored a measly 17/100. You could argue that lists like these are subjective, and there’s no clear definition of what should be considered as a classic, but I urge you to use the list as a way to discover stuff for your never-ending TBR pile.
Another good source is the NYT Best Books of the 21st century list/test (I’ve only read 3 out of 100). BTW, let’s be friends on
LinkedInGoodreads, so we can silently judge each other’s choices. Also, thank you to Goodreadsfor sponsoring this… for reminding me that I’m 6 books behind my yearly challenge.
Sinners is a great movie to watch in the cinema. Great music — if we were in the early 00s, I’d imagine music videos clipped straight from the film playing on VIVA on repeat. We probably need movies that blend gangsters, cultish vampires, the KKK and the blues more than another edition of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Final Destination.
New album by Alina Orlova is sad, subtle and infinitely hummable. Went to the debut gig, enjoyed every single bit of it. If you want to discover an indie folk singer from Lithuania (who also sings in English and has songs based on William Blake poems), she’s your best bet.
Really enjoyed this article by
on the reasons Icelanders are so damn creative. “From ancient manuscripts passed hand-to-hand across remote farms, to rhyming games in turf houses during dark winter evenings, the arts have been woven into everyday life. It’s one of the things I love most about Icelandic culture—and I think it helps explain why storytelling is still such a vital part of life here.“ Having spent a summer in Iceland, I miss it dearly, and I hope to be back at some point.I’m yet to watch Adolescence, but I did find the time to watch the 5th season of You. It has its moments, and there’s a ton of meta stuff, on-the-nose breakdown of literary tropes, and so on. Better than the 4th season by a country mile, but overall quite bland. Definitely an Independent Bookstore Day flick though.
Slowly going through the NYT T Magazine’s Japan special. This article on the darker undertones of cute mascots is particularly worth reading for insights like: “Calligraphy, once vital to the training of samurai, had been made compulsory in primary and secondary school education in 1971 as part of a conservative political resurgence. In this context, the new vernacular handwriting was seen as so disruptive that some schools banned it. One social commentator went so far as to condemn it as “a pathological phenomenon” that threatened to wipe out Japanese as a written language.“
I know my fellow Lithuanians make up probably 10% of my readers, but this one is especially for them. If you want to hang in Zoom, I’ll be running a free webinar on the 22nd of May. It’s going to be about writing, more from copy/content angle, so if you do write for work, this might be up your alley.
I was never a fan of Moby’s music but I gained a ton of respect for the guy after learning about https://mobygratis.com/, a platform he launched with hundreds of free instrumental tracks, which you can use for anything (well, apart from right-wing politics content and the promotion of animal products).
PewDiePie just launched a video on using Linux (watched by 3 million people in the first 24 hours). Will this drive millions to the Open Source side? And is PewDiePie now the most wholesome of the old guard of YouTubers? Getting jacked, sharing parenting advice, starting a book club, exploring alternative Operating Systems… What’s next?
Becoming addicted to this YouTube series showing professional drummers hearing a song for the first time and having to come up with the drum track for it on the fly:
That's all from my side this time. Till next time,
Oleg
🙏💛